During the first lecture, we saw that, up to compact and cocompact groups, locally compact groups of polynomial growth can be reduced to simply connected Lie groups. Therefore we continue with a thorough study of these groups.

1. The lower central series

, . For simply connected nilpotent Lie groups, the Lie algebra functor is an equivalence of categories. In fact, thanks to the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula, the group can be viewed as a multiplication on the Lie algebra.

Pick a complement : . Fix a Euclidean norm on each , denote by the -ball in . Get a Euclidean norm on and a left-invariant Riemannian metric on .

Guivarc’h showed that that -ball in is squeezed between boxes

of respective radii and . It follows that growth is polynomial of degree

Examples

The standard filiform Lie algebra has a basis with only nonzero brackets for . The Lie group is a semi-direct product , where the generator of acts by . One can take and for , .

The Heisenberg Lie algebra has a basis with nonzero brackets . , , .

Upper unipotent matrices. Here .

Free -nilpotent Lie group on generators.

Polynomial vectorfields on the line. Generators are , nonzero brackets are .

2. Carnot Lie algebras

Definition 1 A nilpotent Lie algebra is Carnot if it satisfies one of the equivalent properties

admits a Lie algebra grading such that .

has a contracting automorphism inducing a homothety on .

has a self-derivation inducing a identity on .

is isomorphic to .

The corresponding Lie group admits a proper, geodesic, left-invariant distance with non-isometric similarities.

Here , the associated Carnot algebra, is the natural Lie algebra structure on . It can be thought of as a first order approximation of .

In the above list, all examples are Carnot but the last one, polynomial vectorfields. The associated Carnot algebra is filiform.